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<title>The Mailman of Ottery St. Catchpole by Selina Novella (SilverThistle)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27971459">The Mailman of Ottery St. Catchpole</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverThistle/pseuds/Selina%20Novella'>Selina Novella (SilverThistle)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>British Humor, Especially the ones he's told not to read, Gen, Humor, I bet he did read it, Imagine if Stephen Fry read this, Muggles, Ryan Reynolds Please Don't Read This, Ryan Reynolds Please Read This, That is oddly specific tagging, and, anyway, why is there a tag for</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:41:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,735</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27971459</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverThistle/pseuds/Selina%20Novella</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>I had a thought. My thought was mostly, what about Arthur Weasley's poor muggle mailman though?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Mailman of Ottery St. Catchpole</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The thing was, Archie thought to himself, he wasn't exactly closed minded. In fact he quite thought himself a citizen of the world. He'd studied in Italy while in university, and went on holiday to Australia once. And it's not as though he was intolerant. Lord no, his second cousin and he regularly exchanged Christmas cards with her and her wife and their children's photos on them in Christmas jumpers, and he sent pictures of himself and Margaret in Edinburgh. It was just that, well, when he took up this mail route after he retired, he hadn't really known his neighbors all that well. Hadn't expected how... eccentric they were. Oh there was Sheila and Matthew with their nippy little dog, he'd expected that. Even with the ridiculous hair cuts and how they dyed her fur (all natural non-toxic! Sheila assured him, afraid of being thought of as a poor dog owner). And Jack and Sarah, and their opera singing was a bit annoying, and out of tune, but not really a surprise after the first time when he'd most jumped out of his skin in surprise. Those were odd, but he understood.</p><p> </p><p><br/>It was more, well...</p><p> </p><p><br/>The Diggory's were odd, in that they didn't have a car. Not everyone had a car of course, Ottery St. Catchpole had a perfectly serviceable bus system, this wasn't America. But Mr. Diggory didn't have a car, and he never seemed to go anywhere. They seemed to make good money, but they never got any paychecks or any bills for that matter, something as a mail man he was uniquely positioned to know. Mrs Diggory didn't get much in the way of mail either. No ladies catalogues, no letters from relatives or old school mates. The only mail they received was the coupon books that everyone on the route got, and they always looked rather shocked when he knocked on their door, and more than once he was certain he had caught Mr. Diggory in a dress. Not a simple one either, it was rather complicated, all sorts of folds and such, in bright purple! But as a mail man you sometimes saw into peoples homes more than you'd prefer so he kept himself to hisself and just nodded at the odd man in the dress holding a wooden baton and just kept on his route. He rather thought they might be Russian spies, to be honest. More than once he'd considered trying to contact MI6, as every day there were loud cracks like a gun shot that came from the house with no explanation. But Margaret told him not to get involved and how embarrassing it would be to be wrong, and really, it could be anything. And to be perfectly honest, Archie had no interest in filling out the paper work that he was sure would be involved. He shuddered involuntarily. He got enough of that in the air force.</p><p> </p><p><br/>Then there were the folks at the Burrow. The Weasels? Wesleys? Weasleys? He was pretty sure it was Wesleys. Their mail, what little there was of it, was like the Diggory's, only addressed to the resident, so he wasn't 100% sure. He didn't have to deliver there often, thank goodness, it was a bit of a walk. But he'd heard from his predecessor that the family had ten children! or so he swore. Several were grown now, and it turned out one son he'd seen was actually, two, there was definitely a set of twins, so Archie wasn't entirely sure how many were there now or had been originally. There were certainly a lot of them and they were very loud, rambunctious, and half wild. They seemed to breed birds, with many chickens, and he was quite sure he'd seen an owl. Possibly two. In the middle of the day as well, and he wasn't an owl expert but he was fairly sure owls weren't supposed to be out and about during the day. And there was something odd in the garden, though every time he tried to remember what it was his head got rather fuzzy. They were an odd bunch, home schoolers, probably, as they never showed up at the local primary. Nor did the Diggory's son, for that. Mr. Wesley had, the last time he'd had to go the door to deliver, spent over an hour interrogating him on how airplanes worked after he made the mistake of mentioning his old service days. Archie <em>flew</em> planes, 35 <em>years</em> ago. That didn't make him an engineer or a physicist. He hadn't been told how planes stayed up, or if he had he'd forgotten it after 30 someodd years of selling insurance.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>At least that was more interesting than the time previous, when he'd been held up asked about what a mechanical PENCIL was. He was quite sure he was being mocked, and if Mr Wesley WAS actually somehow unaware of mechanical pencil use, there still seemed to be a level of ... well he wasn't quite sure what the word for it was. Rather like Margaret's posh great uncle, who liked to go on safari to the most far reaches of the wild and would come back talking about how amazing it was that local tribes had managed to do as much as they did without inventing the steam engine and not learning Chaucer at school. He felt talked down to somehow, by a man who apparently didn't know what a mechanical pencil did, and collected plugs. It made him more than a bit grouchy, to be honest, and Margaret would always know, even without looking at the clock, when he'd had to visit the Burrow, because his head wasn't on quite straight afterwards. Especially if Mrs Wesley had been screaming at her children for something. The woman could out scream a banshee. Diggory and Wesley always left him a bit bothered, something a bit not right about them both. But it was the Lovegoods that took the whole bloody cake shop.</p><p> </p><p><br/><br/>Xenophilius. He might not know the Wesleys/Weasels/Weasleys name for certain, but Xenophilius stayed in his mind right enough. Unlike Margaret's family of nobs going back generations, Archie's family was common. Lived in the same county since before one of them had been taught how to read and write, which had been some time in the 1700s, generally working in farms with the odd brick maker. But Archie wasn't an idiot. And while he never went to Eton and learned Latin, he knew enough to know Xenophilius meant strange-lover or something more or less to that effect. And boy, did that ever describe old Xeno. Somehow, despite Archie's advanced age of 74, and Xenophilius' Lovegood's younger age, there was just something about him that got him the honorific, or rather, pejorative, "old". He was on drugs. Obviously. All the time. Possibly more drugs than blood in his veins, Archie had long ago decided. And completely of his head to boot. He was an inventor. Or at least, Archie thought he was. Was he? He seemed like he SHOULD be. A mad scientist type. He certainly invented IDEAS.</p><p> </p><p><br/>Wild conspiracy theories, things about mystical creatures and the like. The Prime Minister was an alien, that sort of thing, he had tried to explain to Margaret once. But you couldn't actually EXPLAIN the Lovegoods. How could you describe the ... the plum tree, with the fruit that floated? But looked like radishes? Or the odd shape of the house? Or the way things moved in pictures out of the corner of your eye, or how if he offered you tea the spoon would stir itself? And he saw nothing wrong with it and seemed baffled when you mentioned it? Archie was rather sure that he had the drugs in the air he breathed, because it wasn't possible for newspapers to fly through the air on their own and pile up nice and neat. For OWLS to fly away with. That was nonsense. He'd actually called the bobbies after that, and filled out the paper work. Xenophilius had a daughter, Lara or Luna, young blonde thing with enormous eyes and straggly long blonde hair, and she shouldn't be surrounded by drugs like that. It wouldn't be good for a developing young brain. But when he followed up with the bobbies later they just shrugged at him. They'd ransacked the place, done tests, and found all sorts of odd things, but no drugs. (They didn't seem entirely certain about that though, glancing at each other confusedly, and seemingly having misplaced the paperwork for it.)</p><p> </p><p><br/>So he'd continued on, ignoring with every fiber of his being the gravity defying root vegetables, the owls with the night allergies being used as carrier pigeons for a newspaper with moving photos, and he definitively, positively, never <em>ever</em> <strong><em>ever</em></strong> noticed Luna Lovegood and the Wesley boys flying on broom sticks 10 meters up. That never happened. It was Old Xeno's drugs, the long walk, and the lack of a good breakfast that day. He was Archibald George Smith. He was 74 years old. He was a former fighter pilot in her royal majesty's air force, a (retired) damn good insurance seller, a husband, father, and grandfather. He was <em>NOT</em> going senile, and he did <em>NOT</em> see children flying about on cleaning tools.<br/><br/><br/><br/>He also could <em>NOT</em> explain that to Margaret.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Which meant he couldn't quietly retire from being a mailman either.<br/><br/><br/><br/>Maybe it was time the Smiths finally left Ottery St. Catchpole. 300+ years was a rather long time for a family to stay in one place. Surely there were other places, where he didn't need to hold back tears every time there was a holiday coupon book out. His brother-in-law, Benjy, had been trying to convince him to move for years. Get a nice condo somewhere warm. No cross dressing Russian spies using explosives, no questions about what the difference was between a satellite dish and a salad dish, and no Xenophilius Lovegood. Even if Benjamin occasionally put on airs, it'd be worth it.</p><p> </p><p>Yes, he thought to himself firmly, it was time to talk to Margaret. Southern France was the place for them to live out their retirement. Or maybe Portugal, if Benjamin got too irritating. Retiring to the sea. For his nerves. Not to make the hallucinations he was rather terrified weren't hallucinations go away. Not at all.</p><p> </p><p>Nope.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>If you're new to my work, this is not my best. This is the result of something cooking in my brain while I wrote a 40 page paper in 10 days, in a class I had more or less ignored because I thought the paper at the end was 10 pages and I could BS it. I was incorrect. So this is something I've written up in half an hour after sending in my paper and downing several rum and cokes. It amused me, I hope it amuses you. Happy Yule and maybe next year I'll actually update my Avengers fics.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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